News Room

On a recent Saturday morning, Peggy Hoon got behind the wheel of her 2011 Toyota RAV4 and made the 300-mile round trip to Charlotte from her Raleigh home. After weeks of waiting on hold or hearing about COVID-19 vaccination events only after they’d filled up, the 65-year-old Wake County resident finally got a shot. She considers herself lucky and worries about equity issues that leave other seniors unable to find doses of the precious vaccine. State officials say the primary barrier to rolling out the vaccines has been a lack of supply. But the N.C. Watchdog Reporting Network found that in some cases, health workers are giving doses to people who do not yet qualify, according to guidelines from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.

If achieving the intelligent enterprise were easy, everyone would have done it by now. The road to creating, or re-creating, a business optimized by AI to take advantage of machine-assisted decision-making at all levels of the organization is a long one. Two key questions are, how far along are we on the path toward achieving this vision of future productivity, and are there ways organizations can improve their odds of success? Companies are now directing billions of dollars globally each year toward AI development, yet more often than not, they’re frustrated by the lack of progress. In fact, only 1 in 10 managers who responded to a recent global survey conducted by MIT SMR and BCG could point to tangible returns. With AI investment expected to more than double to $110 billion by 2024, it’s not surprising that some leaders are asking whether that money would be better spent elsewhere in their organizations.

It wasn’t just Covid-19 itself, but the public response to it, which sent shockwaves through our food system and exposed its fragility. Short-term shortages, in the form of bare supermarket shelves, revealed that this highly complex food supply chain is not as resilient as it ought to be. All it took was fear of a toilet paper shortage — there was never a production problem — to turn paper products into the lockdown’s scarcest commodities. While the system adjusted to the strange new dynamic after a few weeks, it only took a small shock to empty the shelves of certain foods and other essentials. What happens if greater pressure were placed on the food supply chain by someone acting intentionally? Would we be able to cope with the result?

COVID-19 vaccinations are precious, but Florida has wasted thousands of shots to date. To some, it's unfortunate but expected. Others are challenging the state to do better. As of Feb. 9, Florida Health reported at least 4,143 shots had been squandered across the state. Officials said in a statement that most were broken either in transit or during use. Other doses spoiled before injection. More than 1,000 shots were ruined in a single incident in West Palm Beach. The Health Care District of Palm Beach County said someone mistakenly turned off a refrigerator.

The U.S. celebrated when new coronavirus vaccines were developed at record-breaking speed. And in December the candidates from Pfizer and BioNTech and Moderna were quickly approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration. But two months later, only 10 percent of Americans have received at least one shot. And fewer than 3 percent of them have received both of the necessary doses. Many feel frustrated with the slow distribution process and confused about how to sign up for shots. What exactly is making all this take so long?